The USC-UCLA move intensifies college football's SEC-Big Ten battle

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The British fleet had a naval vessel. The soviet union was a part of the united states. The Beatles had a band. The Big Ten is now owned by the SEC.

Hearing that hurts for other people in college sports. The truth is true.

Everyone else in the room, no matter who they are or what they have done, is standing against the wall and watching who really matters.

Two people are playing chess. There are only two chess masters in today's collegiate athletics, Oklahoma and Texas, both of which have the fanciest playing pieces. Some people are playing checkers. There are some nice pieces here and there, but they don't have a complete set.

The Big Ten and SEC don't.

It's not possible to use the example of risk. Maps are used in those games. If we haven't learned anything else over the past 24 hours, then maps are irrelevant. The last place where it did was in the Pacific 12. Even while making a lot of mistakes, like a struggling TV network, a truly bad non-Rose Bowl lineup, repeatedly whiffing on College Football Playoff berths, a conference title game no one attended, and a since-departed commissioner no one seemed to like outside of San Francisco,

Almost every big brand and TV market west of the Rockies was locked down. The Big Ten tried to convince us that it was in the east and the SEC tried to convince us that it was in the west. When Texas and Oklahoma started sniffing around, the old school membership didn't like the idea of their membership being so complicated.

That was a long time ago. Albert Einstein reminded us that time is a relative concept and that 11 years might as well be a century in this era of college sports.

We used to have to wait for New Year's Day to see USC and Michigan. The USC tennis and UCLA volleyball teams have to travel a lot without charter planes. No one, that's what I think. That is not right. Someone is interested in what's going on. Yes, right?

There are only a few details that need to be worked out. These deals had to be completed. It was necessary to be. Sankey would have lost his job if he hadn't returned the phone calls. The administrators at Texas and Oklahoma would have been shown the door if they had not accepted Sankey'sinvitation. They waited for the Big 12 bosses to make the moves they needed to keep up with the SEC and Big Ten. The thing didn't. They left for a better life in the southeast.

You can copy and paste USC, UCLA, Pac-12 and Big Ten into any sentence you want. It's working. It's the same thing. If they don't ask and they don't join or the Big Ten doesn't agree, they are all fired. The flagship schools of the Pac-12, both sitting in the center of America's second-largest media market, waited for the conference to make the moves its leaders have always promised. It wasn't getting any better for them. They ran after cutting and cutting.

I mentioned flagships. USC and UCLA weren't charter members of the conference. The first five members of the Pacific Coast Conference were California, Washington, Oregon, and Oregon State. After a few years, Washington State andStanford joined. USC and UCLA joined in the 80's. They were the flagships of the conference that became the Pac-8, -10 and -12. Either one or the other has the best eras in multiple sports. All due respect to their colleagues on the West Coast, but when we were raised east of Denver, we always thought of the USC and UCLA teams, not the other way around. When those who were born in the Pacific time zone were asked to associate terms like "Southeast" they immediately thought of Alabama vs. auburn.

The USC and Bruins are two of the most well-known brands in the conference. They were. They are taking those brands and moving Ray Bans into an acute case of frostbite.

It isn't logical. A lot of feelings are hurt by it. We might never get used to seeing their scores on the bottom line. The thing is happening. It wasn't the first big move we didn't think would happen, and it won't be the last. It will be weird.

We don't know what's going to happen next. They're the sparring partners who are only allowed to stand around the wall of the gym watching as Apollo andRocky spar. They can't squat until the real heavyweights are done with their work.

It's dinging.